He envisioned her awake, just as he was, tossing uncomfortably in her small bed that rested in the far corner of her studio apartment and slowly coming to terms with what she needed to do.
But when he dragged his unrested body from his bed the next morning, his phone was still devoid of messages.
He had been cruel—he knew it. He could only hope he hadn’t pushed her too far, but that she would somehow understand he was just trying to protect their future.
Christian ate a bowl of cold cereal and then forced himself into the steam of his shower, desperate to find anything to chase away his fatigue. He found his head in a cloud, both from lack of sleep and from the scenarios running through his mind, ones including a life without Elizabeth.
What if she never came back?
Could he really give her up?
As he rubbed the soapy washcloth over his body, he tried to picture an existence without her. A life void of the perfect pitch of her voice, the way it rang out when she laughed. A life in which he didn’t touch the softness of her skin or have the right to pull her body against his. A life without a child crying out from the next room as he tried unsuccessfully to study for the bar.
Groaning, he shook his head and forced it all away, telling himself it would not come to that.
He was certain when he saw her in class today, she would take her normal seat beside him in the lecture hall, lean in, and whisper in his ear that he was right.
But when her seat remained vacant, his unease grew, gnawing at his stomach. The moment the professor dismissed class, Christian raced from the room and to the café where Elizabeth and he studied every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. He frantically scanned the room, finding several mildly familiar faces but not the one he wanted to see.
By the time he reached her apartment complex, he was panting, both from exertion from the mile he had run and the constriction fear had placed on his heart. He pounded on the door, giving her no time to answer before he yelled, “Elizabeth!” There was no sound from the other side, no rustling of curtains or faint shuffling of feet. Even then, he wasn’t satisfied. Fumbling with his keys, he found his spare and pushed it into the lock.
The door opened to the quietness, the small studio comfortably cluttered as always. The only thing that seemed amiss was the blankets from her normally neat bed were strewn on the floor. Christian crossed the space to the only separate room. The door to the bathroom rested ajar, that room as empty as the first.
Christian pressed his back against the wall and took a deep breath. He wasn’t prepared for this. He’d never thought it would go this far.
Reluctantly, he forced himself out of the apartment, shutting and locking the door behind him before he left, hating the voice inside his head that kept telling him this was for the best.
~
Reeling from the betrayal, Elizabeth ran down the three flights of stairs and away from the man she had thought would always stand by her side. She felt as if she’d been mortally wounded by his words. Christian knew that wasn’t an option for her. How could he even have suggested it?
In the harshness of his words, she’d searched the depths of his blue eyes for the man she thought she knew but must have never really known. The man she thought she knew would never have been so cruel. She knew as she told him goodbye that her voice had shaken with heartbreak, but her choice was unwavering. There was nothing more important than the child growing inside her. When he’d called out to her just before she’d left, she’d prayed he had changed his mind. Above all, she loved him and didn’t want to live without him, but second to that, she was scared. She didn’t want to raise a child by herself, but she realized she would have to do just that when she heard no softness in his voice, but more words to inflict pain.
Tears fell endlessly as she walked the half mile from Christian’s apartment to her own. Her stomach was in knots and protesting each step she took.
She refused to look behind her as she pressed forward, her feet heavy with heartbreak, the weight causing her to stumble.
Halfway home the pain in her stomach intensified, and she vomited into some shrubs planted under the window of a storefront. This only caused her to cry harder and the cramps to worsen, which resulted in three more episodes before she made it to the single flight of stairs leading to her apartment door. She clung to the railing, holding herself up as she vomited once more over the side.
By then she was weeping, unable to control the shaking that had taken over her body. She made it to the landing of her apartment and, with trembling hands, let herself into the only place she came close to being able to afford.
She felt cold, her body convulsing as she pulled her clothes from her body and stepped into a shower that should have been hot enough to scald. Even then, she found no warmth, and she curled in upon herself on the tiled shower floor, hoping for comfort. She only quivered and shook more. She felt as if she was frozen from the inside out and nothing could thaw the chill that had settled deep in her bones. She wrapped herself in a towel and sank to her bathroom floor, heaving again into the toilet.
Elizabeth was scared.
She’d never felt so terrible before. She ached. The worst part was she couldn’t discern the source of the pain—whether it was from something truly wrong with her or from the trauma of having her life shattered around her.
Most of all she worried about her baby. She didn’t know many things about pregnancy, but nothing about this felt normal to her. So when her stomach recoiled again and nothing came up, she was sure she needed help.
She pulled herself up to stand, steadied herself with a hand against the wall when she swayed with dizziness, and prayed she could make it to her phone.
She wanted Christian so badly, and her first instinct was to dial his number, but she forced herself to dial seven different digits than the ones she so desperately wanted.
Christian was no longer hers, no longer one she could rely on, and there was only one other person in this city that she trusted.
His voice was scratchy and hoarse with sleep when he answered, “Hello?” More time had passed than Elizabeth had realized. It was nearing midnight.
“Matthew . . .” she rasped, his name barely audible. The desperation in her voice pulled him from his haze, and he shot straight up in bed.
“Elizabeth?” Matthew became frantic. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
At least three seconds passed before she wheezed out a shaky, “No.”
Matthew pulled on pants and stuffed his arms into the first button up he could find while keeping the phone pressed between his ear and shoulder. He tried unsuccessfully to sound calm. “Elizabeth, sweetheart, tell me what’s wrong.” He was already out the door and starting his car before she could answer that she was sick.
Matthew was at her apartment and up the short flight of stairs before five minutes had passed, where he found his friend curled up on her bed, shivering under a pile of blankets.
“Elizabeth?” He rushed to her side, pulling the covers back to expose just her head, her blond hair darkened to a near brown from the profuse sweat pouring down her forehead.
He reached out to push her hair away so he could see her face, shocked by the paleness of her skin and the swollen redness of her eyes.
Matthew wanted to ask her a million questions, but she was passing in and out of consciousness, and it was clear she needed more help than he could give. He pushed her covers to the floor except for the one he wrapped her in before bringing her into his arms. Her small body was heavier than he anticipated, completely limp, and he struggled to maneuver her down the stairway and to his car.
He contemplated dialing 911, but the hospital was so close, he was certain he would get her to the emergency room before an ambulance could arrive.
Within minutes, Matthew was pulling around the circular drive under the bright red glow of the sign that read, “Emergency Room.”
He entered through the automatic doors, yelling for help. With a flurry of
activity, several orderlies pulled Elizabeth from his arms and placed her on a gurney.
The nurse led Matthew to a small curtained area where Elizabeth lay unconscious. He felt overwhelmed as the nurse hammered him with questions he could not answer.
“Date of birth?”
“Is she on any medications?”
“Does she have any allergies?”
“When did the symptoms start?”
Shaking his head that had begun to pound from the immense amount of stress, he stated he didn’t know.
He slumped into a hard, plastic chair pushed against the far corner of the wall and watched as they began to poke and prod at his friend. He felt helpless, having no idea what he was supposed to do.
Should he call someone?
Christian?
Elizabeth’s mother?
No. She had called him, and that in itself gave him a clue. She needed him, and so he chose to be there for her, even if it meant waiting around and having no idea what was going on.
As he sat silently in the corner and watched the nurses and a doctor work over Elizabeth, he thought about how she’d come into his life. He’d met her the year before at the small diner where they worked on the weekends. They were much alike in many ways. They both lived in a city neither could afford, attending a college they’d dreamed of most of their young lives, living off scholarships, grants, and mounting student loans they’d both be paying for well into their thirties. The tips they made on a Saturday shift barely covered food and necessities for the week. But neither of them looked at those things as negatives in their lives. Instead, they embraced the opportunity and ran with it, and they’d become fast friends.
Matthew obviously knew how beautiful Elizabeth was. He wasn’t blind, but he’d never viewed her that way and didn’t harbor unrequited feelings. He loved her as a friend. Truly.
That didn’t mean he liked her boyfriend. To Matthew, Christian was a spoiled rich kid who was doing nothing more than slumming while he played at college. He was certain Christian would break Elizabeth’s heart.
Matthew winced for Elizabeth when they inserted a long, thick needle into her forearm before attaching an IV bag to the line.
For what seemed an eternity, Matthew sat and watched Elizabeth sleep while the color slowly came back to her face as the bag dripped its contents into her veins. Really, little more than an hour had passed when the very young doctor who had examined her returned, chart in hand.
He extended his free hand across the small space to Matthew. “Dr. Lopez.”
Matthew nodded and shook his hand. “Matthew Stevens.”
“All of her test results are back . . . severely dehydrated . . . anemic . . . pregnancy . . . too much stress . . .” Matthew tried to focus on what the doctor was saying, but really heard nothing more than pregnancy.
Matthew felt lightheaded with the implications this would have for his friend. Slowly everything fell into place, the late night phone call to him when it should have been to someone else, the swollen eyes—the doctor’s words about too much stress triggering shock.
Matthew curled his fists, sickened that someone could treat his friend so poorly—anyone that poorly. Matthew’s first instinct was to go straight to Christian Davison’s apartment and tear him apart. Instead, he moved to sit on the edge of Elizabeth’s bed and ran his hand through his friend’s matted hair, silently promising her he would always take care of her.
~
May 2005
Christian stood in front of the full-length mirror, studying himself in the long, black gown, seeing nothing more than a pathetic excuse for a man staring back at him.
He should have felt proud. Receiving his bachelors at Columbia with top honors should be a proud day. His mother and father had just left his apartment to await him in the car but not before his father had proclaimed how proud his only son had made him this day.
But Christian didn’t feel proud—he felt ashamed.
He’d seen her about three weeks before in line at the store, though she hadn’t seen him. He had gathered the few items he needed, deodorant, shampoo, and toothpaste, and hastily had made his way back up to the registers. He’d scanned for the shortest line when he saw the wavy locks of blond hair he knew so well. He’d felt an immediate pull, the need to go to her, but had frozen when she turned to the side, exposing the large protuberance in her abdomen.
Like a coward, he’d hidden himself, watching her with an almost morbid curiosity from behind a row of shelves. He felt sick, observing the woman he still loved, but had betrayed, strain to reach the items in the cart—diapers, blankets, and small things he didn’t recognize. She was preparing for her baby to be born.
It frightened him that she now seemed thinner than he remembered, her skin sallow and chalky, gaunt, as if the growing mass in her front had stolen all the life from the rest of her body.
Even then, she was still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
But, like he already knew himself to be, he remained the coward and did nothing but watch as she paid for her things and walked out the door.
It was the only time he’d seen her since they’d fought at his apartment. She’d never returned to class, had never called or sought him out, had never changed her mind.
He had made no real effort of his own since that first day when he’d gone to her place, only calling once and hanging up when a man had answered her phone. He could have tried harder—should have tried harder—but he’d taken the easy way out. He’d convinced himself that he didn’t ache for her, pretended that his sleepless nights had nothing to do with his worry for her. He told himself she’d moved on, that she didn’t need him, that she’d found her own way. Even if she had, he knew it still didn’t absolve his responsibility for the child.
So as his guilt had grown, he’d done more and more to drown it out, spending long days in class and even longer nights with his head spinning from the amount of alcohol he’d consumed, then waking to unfamiliar women in unfamiliar beds.
No, today was not a proud day.
Christian grabbed his cap and trudged downstairs to join his parents in their waiting car.
~
The celebratory dinner was everything Christian had expected it to be, the sound of forks and knives clattering against china filtering into the stuffy atmosphere of the Club, the waiters in tuxedos and far too willing to accommodate. Christian’s father, Richard, lectured him that his schooling had only begun and that the next three years of law school were going to be the toughest of his life. Claire, Christian’s mother, sat withdrawn as she listened to her husband giving her son instruction he obviously didn’t need.
It was nothing Christian hadn’t heard before. Every conversation he’d ever had with his father had been the same. He’d hoped that for just one night his father would be satisfied, that they could relax and just talk, but it was always about the next step, the next achievement.
Thankfully, Claire interrupted and changed the subject with small talk of their travel plans for the summer. She seemed irritated by her husband this evening, her smile tight and no real light coming from her blue eyes. Normally, she remained mostly quiet during family conversations, sipping from a glass of wine and nodding agreement with whatever Richard said to their son. Tonight though, she seemed anxious, as if she would explode if Richard uttered one more word about Christian’s future. Christian watched his mom from across the table and wondered about her happiness. He wondered if in all the years he had thought her perfectly content in her huge house and endless social gatherings she was ever really happy at all, because when he really looked hard, he saw no true joy in her face.
Christian couldn’t even remember the last real conversation he’d had with his mother, so he smiled at the stories his mother told. Her face took on a new vibrancy as she talked of him as a child, and he relaxed into his chair, no longer guarded, until his mother asked a question he hadn’t been prepared to answer. “What happened with that girl you were dating?
What was her name . . . Elizabeth?”
Christian felt himself tense and his shame return, but he found himself answering her because he needed to tell somebody. Looking at his plate, he muttered, “We broke up.”
“Oh?” his mother asked, as if she expected further explanation, one she would be shocked to hear, but even more shocking was he wanted to tell her.
He lifted his eyes to hers and spoke, even though it was choppy and reeked of confession. “She’s having a baby.”
Almost simultaneously, his parents dropped their utensils to the table, staring as they waited for him to clarify.
“She told me in the fall. I told her I didn’t want it . . . so she left. I haven’t talked to her since.” Christian tried to maintain eye contact with his mother as he said these things, but had to look away when he saw the disappointment race across her face.
Her voice shook, but was still the strongest he’d ever heard. “Christian,” she demanded, “How could you treat someone . . .”
Richard’s rant cut off Claire as Christian’s father spouted words about irresponsibility and money and tarnished reputations. Only Christian noticed when his mother stood and ran from the table.
~
The ride home from the restaurant was tense and silent. Christian’s mother had left the table right after his admission. For the twenty minutes she was away, Christian was scolded by his father. When she’d returned, it was obvious she’d been crying, her makeup smudged and her eyes red. After she had taken her seat, no one had spoken a word nor had they since.
The driver pulled up in front of Christian’s building, and Richard made no move, though his mother exited the car and hugged Christian in a way she hadn’t for many, many years. When she pulled away, her face was wet with tears again, and her hand trembled as she raised it to touch his cheek. “Make this right.” He hadn’t expected this encouragement, and it left him confused as he watched her take her place in the backseat of the Town Car. He stared at their taillights as they drove away and disappeared into the night.
The Regret Series Complete Collection Box Set: Lost to You, Take This Regret, and if Forever Comes Page 16